Casual Reviews – Destiny: The Taken King

“Destiny” by Dani-MIB. CC2.0

Everyone, I have a confession to make. I haven’t been writing anything new. I haven’t been playing anything “new.” I haven’t been doing anything new. In fact, I don’t smell very new. I have been rotting away on my couch spending hours playing…something…something I’m ashamed of.

Normally, I would be excited to tell everyone about a game that is capable of turning me into a junkie jonesing for his next fix, but this time it’s a little awkward. This is because The Taken King is a DLC for a game I previously called out for drowning in mediocrity and laziness, with zero ambition.

Unfortunately, I am now the one who is mediocre and lazy, with no ambition outside of gaining the next bit of loot from The Taken King. The joke is on me…sort of…

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Casual Reviews – Destiny

“Destiny_20150122184727” by Ferino Design. CC2.0.

Having just completed my review of Diablo III, this task is even more difficult than I originally planned. I’ve already tried several humorous opening sentences and deleted them all. They weren’t that good, felt forced, and my heart wasn’t in them. And that is the perfect description of Destiny. Bungie, the creators of Halo (the game that introduced me in spectacular fashion to the FPS genre), brought Destiny to the next generation of consoles in a tidal wave of hype, the likes of which I had never seen before. This game would change our understanding of the very fabric of gaming itself. I allowed myself to be caught up in the expectations. I pre-bought the game.

I don’t want to be so harsh as to accuse the creators of making a game based only on hype in order to earn as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. I believe Bungie cared about Destiny. I believe they care about the gamers. But I also believe they didn’t fully understand what they were doing. Their hearts may have been in this game, but it doesn’t feel that way. Instead, it feels like a paper I once wrote in nursing school. Destiny is trying so hard to dazzle us, but there isn’t a solid outline upon which to do that. Instead, like my paper, it has become an incomprehensible mud of good ideas and intentions.

My paper overwhelmed me every time I tried to work on it. Every change and edit I made seemed to make it worse. It was like fighting against quicksand, and I imagine that’s what Destiny felt like to Bungie.